Eras and technology

The claim runs on a calendar of technology. A town begins in the hand-tool years and, as it grows, moves through steam and rails, gas engines, and the power saw and highway. Each era multiplies a handful of existing rules: how fast the crew recovers, how much timber is lost skidding, what hauling costs, how fast a saw dulls, and what mills and the Mercantile pay. Era 0 multiplies everything by 1, so a claim that never leaves it plays exactly like the claim before eras existed.

Eras 0 to 3 are timber-economy eras. A fifth era for the recreation and lake-home years is a placeholder in the design and is not modelled.

The eras

Era table. Floor is the number of days after the previous era began by which the next era arrives no matter what. Needs are what the town must reach, all of them together, to move on early. All dates and technology are unverified until checked against local sources.

Era	Name	Years	Settlers	Produced per player (bd ft)	Businesses	Roads	Floor (days)	Unlocks
0	Homestead	1900 to 1909	–	–	–	–	0	–
1	Steam and rails	1910 to 1919	30	60,000	2	–	14	rail-freight
2	Gas engines	1920 to 1939	–	180,000	4	6	28	garage-and-trucking
3	Power saw and highway	1940 to 1969	–	500,000	5	10	42	chain-saw-dealer

What moves the clock

updateEra(now):
    while era < last:
        next    = ERAS.eras[era + 1]
        met     = every need of next is reached
        dueAt   = era.since + next.floorDays * 24 hours
        if not met and now < dueAt:  stop
        era    += 1
        since   = now      if met
                  dueAt    otherwise        (it began on the floor date)

The next era begins when its needs are met, or when its floor passes, whichever comes first. One call can cross several eras, so a claim reopened after a long absence catches up. Needs are checked at the time of the call, so an era reached by needs is stamped with the moment the game noticed, not the exact moment the last need was met.

Needs are all required together. Settlers appear only in the first era: they arrive on a fixed clock (SETTLER_EVERY), so once the town has its 30 settlers (about 15 hours in) the count says nothing about what players did. The other needs are things players cause: lumber produced, businesses opened, roads built. The lumber need is per active player, so a town of five and a town of five hundred are measured by the same numbers.

The pacing this aims for, in real days for a shared town: the first change never arrives in the first two days, and a town that moves faster than the calendar reaches each era at roughly a fifth to a third of its floor. The floors count from the previous era, so the latest arrivals are day 14, day 42 and day 84. In the simulator, a town of foresters checking in every 4 or 8 hours reached era 1 around day 2.5 to 3, era 2 around day 8.5 and era 3 around day 28; a mixed town of foresters, a farmer, a miller, an entrepreneur and casual players reached era 1 on day 4 and era 2 on day 20; and a town where nobody opened a business never met that need and arrived at each floor. The simulated foresters are close to the best a player can be, so a real town is likely to arrive later. Balance findings has the runs behind these figures.

The prototype has one player and a simulated town, so most needs use stand-ins:

Need stand-ins in the prototype, and what a shared server would count.

Need	What the prototype reads	What a shared server counts
settlers	settlers(now), the simulated town head count. It does not depend on the player.	Settlers who have joined, with townsfolk households capped at half.
producedBdFt	S.produced, the player's own output, taken per player.	The town's lumber produced divided by the players active in the last 7 days.
businesses	The businesses the player has open.	Every player's open businesses in the town.
roads	The number of road tiles on the player's own claim. The landing tile counts as one.	The town's graded road tiles.

The simulator replaces the stand-ins with sums over its field of bots (townTotals), so a run behaves like one shared town.

A new claim starts at era 0 at the moment it is filed. A save from before eras start at era 0 at the moment it first loads. The sandbox test tool “Advance era” sets the next era at once, and “Grow timber 12 hours” also moves the era start back 12 hours.

The levers

Every modifier is a multiplier on a rule that already exists. The accessor is eraMod(name, key): eraMod('skidLoss') is the current era’s value, and eraMod('speciesDemand', 'wp') is the value for one species code, 1 when the era does not list it.

Modifiers by era. 1 is the hand-tool baseline. Species demand is a map from species code to multiplier.

Lever	Era 0	Era 1	Era 2	Era 3
crewRest	1	0.9	0.8	0.5
skidLoss	1	0.8	0.6	0.5
haulShare	1	0.7	0.55	0.45
tripTime	1	0.7	0.5	0.35
sawWear	1	1	0.9	0.5
ownMillRate	1	1.15	1.3	1.5
cropYield	1	1	1.15	1.4
cropPrice	1	1.05	0.95	0.8
speciesDemand	–	l 1.15, wp 1.05	wp 0.7, rc 1.1, l 1.1	wp 0.5, df 1.1, l 0.9, lp 0.9

What each lever multiplies, and where.

Lever	Meaning
crewRest	Multiplies CREW_REST. Lower is faster work (power saws, more hands).
skidLoss	Multiplies the skidding loss fraction (animals, then donkey engines, then crawler tractors).
haulShare	Multiplies each mill's haul share (steamboat, rail, then trucks).
tripTime	Multiplies each mill's wagon trip time.
sawWear	Multiplies the sharpness lost per cut.
ownMillRate	Multiplies the logs per hour of the player's own sawmill.
cropYield	Multiplies crop yield per harvest (draft horses, then tractors).
cropPrice	Multiplies Mercantile base prices (mechanised farms depress prices).
speciesDemand	Multiplies what mills bid for a species, on top of the mill's own specialty multiplier. This is where blister rust and shifting markets live.

Where each one is applied:

crewRest        rest         = CREW_REST * woodshed * boarding house * crewRest
skidLoss        loss         = min( 0.4, pathCost * 0.008 * skidLoss )
haulShare       haul         = mill.haul * haulShare            (then the teamster stable, below)
tripTime        trip         = mill.trip * tripTime
sawWear         sharpness   -= (0.2 or 0.05) * sawWear          per cut; 0.2 * sawWear per Reserve stand
ownMillRate     logs/hour    = level.cap * ownMillRate          (the yard cap does not change)
cropYield       units        = max( 1, round( yield * cropYield * fertility ) )
cropPrice       price        = round( base * cropPrice * clamp( 1.45 - stock/cap, 0.45, 1.45 ) )
speciesDemand   bid          = max( 20, round( value * mill multiplier * speciesDemand * yardFactor ) )

A wagon already on the road when an era changes finishes by the new trip time. The load was priced at the old haul share when it left.

Old trades fade, never vanish

A business perk keeps working in later eras, but its benefit shrinks toward a floor.

strength(perk) = max( ERAS.fadeFloor, era.fades[perk] )       1 when the era does not list the perk

fadeFloor is 0.3. A listed value is the fraction of the benefit that remains.

Remaining fraction of each perk's benefit, by era, before the floor is applied.

Perk	Era 0	Era 1	Era 2	Era 3
teamster-stable	1	0.8	0.55	0.4
filing-shop	1	1	0.85	0.6

teamster stable (Teamster stable):
    haul multiplier = 1 - 0.5 * strength        0.5 at full strength, toward 1 as it fades
    applies to the haul share on town mill sales and to the Mercantile freight cost (0.05 * multiplier)

filing shop (Filing shop):
    fee = round( FILER_COST * (1 - strength) )  free at full strength, 150 * (1 - strength) otherwise

At era 3 the stable’s multiplier is 1 - 0.5 * 0.4 = 0.8, so the owner saves a fifth of the haul share instead of half. The filing shop charges 60 bd ft per filing instead of nothing. The business itself keeps earning its normal income. Only the owner’s own perk fades.

Unlocks

ERA_UNLOCKS names three businesses that the table says each era opens: rail freight (era 1), garage and trucking (era 2) and chain saw dealer (era 3). They are names only in this prototype. Nothing in the game reads them yet, and each needs a market entry of its own.

What the player sees

A line under the claim title shows the era name and years, a one-line description of its technology, and progress toward the next era: each need with a small bar, and the time left until the calendar floor. Reaching a new era shows a toast and writes a ledger entry.

For the shared game

The era should belong to the town, not to a player. In a shared game the server keeps one era record per town and advances it from the real town: settlers who have joined, lumber produced per active player, businesses open and roads that exist, plus the calendar floor. The prototype stand-ins (the player’s own output, businesses and roads) would be replaced by those. Because every modifier is a pure multiplier, players in the same town can hold different claims and still share one set of rules. The server should own the clock, because an era change moves every price and wait in the game at once. The modifiers in the table are still first guesses, and the fade values in particular decide whether the early trades stay worth owning. The needs and floors were tuned with the simulator on 2026-10-08.

Source: prototype/index.html · constants ERAS, ERA_UNLOCKS in rules.json · logic updateEra, eraNeeds, townTotals, eraAdvance, eraMod, perkStrength, stableHaulMult, filerFee, haulOf, tripOf, crewReady, skidLoss, bidFor, offer, harvest, mercPrice, updateOwn